Caffeine and performance
Many of us consume coffee daily and we love it! However, did you know that caffeine is listed as a stimulant drug, and it has been researched for over 100 years?! Caffeine is also used as energetic aid since it is affecting the central nervous system, skeletal muscles, cardiovascular, respiratory, and hormonal systems.
Caffeine can be found in a variety of forms like coffee (which is 75% of all caffeine consumption) tea, energy, and soft drinks, and chocolate. Caffeine half-life is about 4-5 hours, which means that caffeine can be in our system for up to 10 hours.
The recommended dosage for athletes is about 3-6mg per kg of your body weight, 60 min before the competition. We recommend athletes who are not caffeine naïve, but also not high habitual users, to start with a low dosage, even as low as 1mg per kg, and see how your body will respond.
Caffeine has a multitude of positive effects on training performance, it can—and perhaps should—be used either prior to or during training. Caffeine enhances exercise performance, showing ergogenic effects on aerobic endurance, high-intensity efforts muscular endurance, sprint performance, and maximum strength For endurance athletes caffeine helps sustain performance levels through an increased time of exercise and it can decrease fatigue. Some studies have shown that there are improvements in power resistance training. Acute caffeine ingestion before the sprint training seems to improve the time of running. Improved agility and reaction time are also possible benefits of this performance enhancer.
With many benefits mentioned above, caffeine also has some side effects. The biggest side effect is that it causes addiction. Some other side effects include tachycardia (increased heart rate), anxiety, insomnia, tremor, diuresis, and irritability. Withdrawing from caffeine can also cause some minor troubles like headaches, difficulty concentrating, decreased alertness, increased fatigue, and low energy levels. Those side effects are usually short-term. Toxicity and possible death from overdosage of caffeine are infrequent, often uncontrolled consumption of energy drinks and diet pills can cause those unwanted side effects.
Take home message:
Calculate your caffeine tolerance: Your weight in lbs. divided by 2.2 (1kg=2.2lbs) and multiply by 3mg for lower and 6mg for the upper limit.
Example:
176lbs /2.2= 80kg; 80kg x 3mg= 240mg;
80kg x 6mg= 480mg of caffeine per day.
Be mindful of your timing intake. If you have a game at 5 pm and you consume caffeine at 4 pm then probably you will have trouble falling asleep and achieve a night of high-quality sleep. Caffeine can stay in your body for up to 10 hours, this means that it will remain in your system until 2 am.
Caffeine can also elevate feelings of anxiety which can affect your performance.
Click here for caffeine chart amounts.
*Reference available upon request.
Written by WavVis
9/27/2021
